Dr Guimaraes is seeking funding for a three-year transitional period from Economics into Biostatistics. The long-term objective of this application is to establish the candidate as an independent researcher focused on the application of advanced statistical methods to neurological data. Dr Guimaraes combines a solid background in Econometrics with extensive experience in data analysis. He began his transition into Biostatistics with a one year post-doc in the Department of Biometry and Epidemiology at the Medical University of South Carolina where he joined the Statistical Center for an ongoing NINDS funded Parkinson's Disease Trial. The principal mentor for this project will be Professor Barbara Tilley (Dept of Biometry & Epidemiology) while the secondary mentor will be Professor Mark George (Dept of Psychiatry, Radiology and Neurology). The training plan has two main objectives: 1) to help establish the candidate as a biostatistician and 2) to provide him with a solid foundation in the neurosciences. Consequently, the candidate will attend some advanced courses in statistics as well as a number of selected courses in the biomedical sciences. Other activities such as short term courses and visits to other institutions will complement the candidate's training plan. The research plan is geared toward the development and testing of innovative statistical methods that have the potential to detect treatment effects in the presence of highly skewed data. The two alternative methods that will be explored are the S-Distribution family and quantile regression. These methods will be applied to the volumetric data on volume lesion size collected during the NINDS rt-PA Stroke Trial. In the last year of the award the candidate will concentrate on developing a/research agenda on the application of statistical methods to neuroimaging data.